Drop The Mx In Favor Of Submarine-launched Missiles

September 21, 1988|By Louis Rene Beres.

Now that the INF Treaty will eliminate 1,286 intermediate-range U.S. and Soviet missiles, attention is shifting to the control of long-range

``strategic`` nuclear weapons. In particular, there has been renewed controversy about the MX intercontinental ballistic missile, the giant, multiple-warhead weapon that has become the mainstay of this country`s land-based nuclear deterrent. Michael Dukakis appears to oppose MX in any form;

George Bush has been talking about expanding the system and making it fully mobile.

The initial rationale of the MX was to create a survivable second-strike force for the United States by enlarging our most powerful nuclear weapons and making them invulnerable. Yet, as the MX has been deployed only in existing Minuteman silos, nothing has been done to satisfy this rationale. Indeed, taken together with the Reagan administration`s parallel efforts toward strategic defense, this deployment has undermined deterrence and substantially increased the risks of nuclear war.

Bush would have us improve the MX system`s safety from a Soviet first strike by making it mobile: He has revived the original notion of ``rail transit`` for the missiles, a plan to keep them moving on tracks in a fashion that would make it irrational for the Soviets to seek an advantage via a

``bolt from the blue`` attack. Leaving aside the very serious problems of cost and land use, the Bush plan would do nothing to change Soviet views of MX as a hard-target, counterforce, silo-busting, war-fighting weapon-one that seems suitable only for an American first strike. Moreover, the MX is altogether unnecessary for successful deterrence, as the U.S. can now assure the destruction of an aggressor with its nuclear-armed submarine force.

Surely the Reagan administration has always sought to prevent a nuclear war. However, it has revised the requirements for successful deterrence by maintaining that we need the capacity ``to fight a protracted nuclear war.``

As a result, it has deployed a new generation of war-fighting nuclear weapons- the MX ICBM-that signals U.S. first-strike intentions to the Soviets. Paradoxically, such deployment compels our Soviet adversary to prepare to strike first itself.

To meet legitimate deterrence objectives, the U.S. need only ensure that its strategic forces can destroy an aggressor after riding out a first-strike attack. It does not need to take steps, such as the MX, that threaten the other side`s retaliatory forces.

Significantly, those who support MX must base their support on the curious assumption that a Soviet first strike would be limited. This is the case because if it were unlimited, the U.S. retaliation would hit only empty silos. But there is no reason the Soviets would ever choose rationally to launch a limited first strike against the U.S.; indeed, their policy on nuclear strategy explicitly precludes the reasonableness of limited nuclear war.

The Preamble of the Constitution requires us to ``provide for the common defense.`` Today, this objective can be best met by ending our reliance on vulnerable and provocative land-based missiles, whether fixed or mobile. This could be accomplished by maintaining a sufficient number of certain kinds of nuclear warheads in submarines at sea, a deployment that would be able to destroy the Soviet Union in a counterattack without drawing initial fire to the American homeland.

According to retired Rear Adm. Gene La Rocque, director of the highly regarded Center for Defense Information in Washington, the U.S. requires 1,000 nuclear warheads that can survive a Soviet first strike. Right now, this country has 36 missile submarines, of which about 20 are at sea at all times. These 20 subs, which can target sites up to 4,000 miles away, are armed with more than 3,000 nuclear warheads, three times the number needed for adequate deterrence.

There is an element of irony here. The new Trident II submarine-launched missile is a first-strike weapon remarkably similar in mission to the MX. Therefore, to phase out the MX in favor of a sea-based nuclear deterrent that would be accurate and powerful enough to destroy Soviet missiles in their silos would make little sense. Recognizing, as did the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in 1979, that ``the Trident II could be perceived as a first-strike weapon,`` the Soviet Union would be as threatened by this form of sea-basing as by the MX.